Guild Wars 2

Wethospu.6437:

What was the point of playing Necromancer to begin with? No one told you to do that. And it’s not like it gets any better.

Hey, I remember hearing that Necro was actually pretty decent at scale 70+ fractals….. oh wait.

lordkrall.7241:

Maybe I should have been clearer: There are 10 more on higher scales that most likely will be harder. And looking at how the Fractals scale over all it does tend to jump quite a bit in difficulty rather drastically later on.

I really hope your first point is valid, cause the second one isn’t, as shown below.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We fixed a number of bugs and made lots of balance changes to existing fractals. Also the difficulty scaling has been tweaked overall to create a slightly less difficult curve up to 50.

edited for clarity.

KOPPER.1458:

If you aren’t at 30 when the patch hits you already lost out…seems silly.

If the bulk of your playtime is on the weekend, you’ve lost out. If you can only play an hour or two each day, you’ve lost out.

Basically if you’re planning on anything other then sitting down to do fractals with a dedicated group for 6+ hours the next couple night you’ve probably lost out.

Title of this thread sums it up perfectly.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fractured/Rewards-of-Old/first#post3228355

Acotje.5689:

These are the stats you want to aim for.
No need for Accessories, no need for second weapon set..that is for bads and you know it!

Hey, at least he has a melee weapon…… for underwater.

lordkrall.7241:

Fror.2163:

The only instability we saw so far is a real joke. That is no challenge. It might be annoying in the dredge fractal because we kill so many and in cliffside because we’re forced to camp at some points, but challenging? Never.

It was also one of the first, so one can assume it is also one of the easiest.

It was scale 39. That shouldn’t be one of the easiest but dead center in difficulty.

So one instability per level.

From the live stream we saw one that makes meleeing a bit harder, and they mentioned there was one that made ranging a bit harder. So this could potentially make it that some groups could have an easier time with scale 50 then 48 (hard to say til the update goes live and someone has the time to get up there)

So why can’t we get an option to add challenge for ourselves by adding extra instabilities?

In an extreme example, allowing the people that enjoyed challenging themselves at scale 80 to challenge themselves at scale 50 by using all 19 current instabilities.

This could also be a perfect way to attach titles to fractals instead of just “complete ## difficulty while doing X and/or in Y amount of time” it could be something “complete ## difficulty with 4 extra instabilities (5 total)”

ThiBash.5634:

lordkrall.7241:

So what should they do?
Push every single release back several years in order to find every possible issue that might turn up?

No, but it would be nice if they took a breather and fixed some of the more annoying issues. Like they did with the current fractals. Only then they introduced new ones again.

I wouldn’t say that 4 months is rushed either tbh.

Judging from what happens at 30:50 (bosses in the cinematic also appear AGAIN when the fight actually starts) I’d say 4 months was too little. It’s working, but still much unpolished.

There’s just so many things that feel…unfinished or not thought-through enough. Like with ascended gear uniqueness and infusions. A little more thought into the process and they’d realized that by making ascended gear unique AND include the upgrades in the stats, they made that much extra work for themselves because they now have to add each combination by hand…twice.

Remember it was a living story team that made this update, not a dedicated dungeon team. To my knowledge, there are 3 LS teams, updated every 2 weeks → 6 weeks to work on this.

swiftpaw.6397:

Enaretos.8079:

Why so much hate for necros :‘( ? I know they don’t bring much, but if you’re just aiming for a good run and not a record breaking speedrun, it works just fine, no ?

I mean if you play a power necro with spoj’s dungeon build, everything is good and well, right?

Basically. They are fine in full zerk but. Why? Why take them over any other class?

That’s really it for me and many people who have multiple classes. Why play your weakest card if you don’t have to?

Some may say ‘because it’s fun’ which I could almost agree with in full zerk, but the problem I have with is that a dungeon involves not just you but 4 other people.

When I am in a party of other people, I want to perform my best because I don’t just impact myself anymore, my choices impact others too.

I look forward to the day that Arena Net adds some group utility to the necro that will make it competitive with the other classes in dungeons.This may not happen for a good while considering they pander to the PvPers and have no idea (the poor souls) how to split skills.

Still would rather a full berserker necro pug over a full clerics/pvt anything else pug.

Some may say ‘because it’s fun’ which I could almost agree with in full zerk, but the problem I have with is that a dungeon involves not just you but 4 other people.

Content is easy enough that 5 people aren’t needed. So long as the vitals are covered (banners, projectile defense if needed, some manner of stacking might), I personally wouldn’t mind one party member running necro for fun in a casual speed run. Probably wouldn’t add much more then a minute per run. That said on a dungeon tour >10, it could add up, so probably ask them to limit their necro fun play to only a few paths.

Mesmers that use feedback….. when there aren’t projectiles to be reflected.

^ That. Also sword 4 can do some damage to lupi, shield 4 is useless.

JMar.3254:

I think leaderboards is a silly idea that nobody wanted. What’s the point of leaderboard for PvE? Just put /age in a board and let us keep our levels.

Let me rephrase that for you.

What’s the point of a leaderboard in PvP? Just go and face someone in a match to show you’re better than them.

Silly right?

Leaderboards attach meaning to skill and promote competition to improve skill.

Now the thing is, in PvP, you’re constantly matched against something that is working to improve it’s skill as well.

For this to work in PvE there needs to be one of two things:

1. hard enough content that progression is nearly impossible to really attach meaning to the people in the upper ranks

1. Some sort of reset interval, similar to the ladder in Diablo 2, so it becomes more of a race.

Option one is already out since they’ve said they’re making content easier (though there was a post alluding to opening up the 50 tier in the future….. maybe that will be harder?)

As for the second one, the reason it worked so well in D2 was because you were starting with a new character each reset. It also required you to get new gear – of which was a difficult task in that game. This really goes against the what most of GW2 is about, so I don’t see something like this being implemented (though it would make for a fun player driven event….. if fractal level wasn’t account bond now).

Anicetus.1253:

Fractal leaderbords are probably going to say as much about skill as AP leaderbords currently do. Little hint: saw someone selling his 17k AP account with 5x Cleric and 3x Celestial gear.

I’d say they’ll mean even less if it ends up with there ends up being a few thousand players tied for first.

Sure the devs have alluded to opening up higher difficulty tiers. And if they’re making 40s easier the the old 40s, maybe they’ll realise they need to progress to making the new 50s, 60s, 70s harder than their older counterparts. But, if they take too long on opening those difficulty tiers, they’ll be no hardcore PvE players left to complete them.

First off, I think a leaderboard that show’s a player’s skill in PvE is a great idea.

Not only does this allow the top players to compete in a way beyond “who has the fastest speed record,” but it also attaches a deeper meaning for more casual players to improve themselves (as well as what players they should be looking towards for how to improve themselves).

What worries me the most is: at present going from 30-50 would take very little time. To prevent this, we’ve been told there will be:

• reset on AR
• Mistlock Instabilities

AR really doesn’t mean anything, as all of those attacks can be dodged, except for maw (and I would it will also be un-dodgeable with the molten duo and Mai as well). In any case grinding out AR for final boss’s undodgeable attack isn’t really something that is going to be a huge challenge nor something that shows a player’s skill.

So “Mistlock Instabilities” – are these going to provide enough challenge that being in the top 10 of the leaderboard will mean something, or are we going to end up with a leaderboard filled with everyone tied for first at rank 50?

swiftpaw.6397:

Dahkeus.8243:

Rule # 498 of Video Game Interweb Forums: As soon as anyone claims something to be difficult, someone else must state that this content is in actuality very easy and proclaim, either directly or indirectly through inherent assertion, that any failures are due to the player having an uncommonly inferior ability to play the game.

Commonly inferior ability to run a decent build*

Bit of both for fractals. If the grawl shaman keeps going into add phases with half of the party members sub 50% due to their inability to dodge arrows…. then yeah that party is going to have problems – especially when a guard wasted their reflects during the non-add phase to protect from said arrows.

On the other hand, you can have all the projectile defense/dodge skill in the world, but if the warriors next to you are running pvt shout heal, the elementals are not going to die quick enough and the party will get overwhelmed

swiftpaw.6397:

Clearly a viable and serious build. Here is the evidence. Now mods need only watch it and restore the thread to its former glory. (And sticky it)

The build is too strong and game breaking – as this video shows. They’ll not restore the thread as they’re too afraid of the build spreading before they can put together a patch to nerf it.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Relic

Anyway, total reward from level 8 daily rewards is 58 – 6 relics for each normal level, 20 from the jade maw and 20 from the daily. Thus 3 days doing your daily to get a bag. You could run it again for a reward of 38 (only getting the normal and jade maw rewards).

When people talk about Maw in fractals they are talking about the Jade Maw, not the open world event.

Also, you can get multiple daily chests a day. On one character you can get the 0-9 chest, 10-19 chest, 20-29 chest, etc. You can also get the two daily chests for one difficulty tier by doing it on two different characters.

I’d recommend getting up to fractal level 10 (or ideally 16 or 18 for more normal relic gain) so you’re also getting pristine relics while you’re farming your normal ones so you can gear you’re characters up.

Anierna.6918:

Post update, since they’re swapping the 15 and 25 minors in illusions, I was thinking of trying 10/20/0/25/15. I’m not sure if sacrificing 100 prec, 10% crit dmg, and an 8-12% modifier for 100 condi dmg, a 15% modifier on phantasms, and 20% reduced recharge on illusions will be worth it though. Something to test post-update.

Not worth it.

10/30/0/20/10 → instances where projectile defense is needed and others are not there to help pick up the slack

10/30/0/10/20 → instances where projectile defense is covered with other party members or not as needed.

In any case, the OP isn’t level 80 and is doing open world content to level

0/10/0/20/25 or post patch moving IC to 15 points 0/20/0/20/15

You’ll want the focus to just move around the map quicker or getting used to useing it for reflects.

IC will help with getting phantasms out which will be an issue by how quickly things die in the open world.

Still pick up the best offensive gear you can get (mighty/strong/berserker) and any normal/vet will melt in the open world. Throw extra points into dueling and then domination as you get them.

If you want to go at champs solo, put a ranged option on swap and pay close attention to what it is doing so you can learn when to dodge, and fall back to your ranged option to kite for a bit when you start taking too much damage.

The paths used to be Forward/Forward, Forward/Up and Up/Up, named after the directions you would pick to go while progressing through the dungeon.

When TA Forward/Up (tafu) is the path that was “closed”. Back when it was still “open” there was a complaint by a significant portion of the player base on the last boss being too hard. This was due to the last boss having an attack that would spawn adds if not dodged that could quickly grow to unmanageable numbers – and said adds not despawning if the party wiped.

While organised groups had no problems either DPSing the boss to death before the adds became a problem or dodging the attack, A.net decided to “fix” the issue by getting rid of the path and replacing it with a new path during the Twilight Assault living story.

The new path features aetherblades and scarlet and is much longer than most other dungeon paths making it not very commonly run.

The Forward/Forward and Up/Up paths still exist.

You can do that with the mini map.

Put a personal waypoint on the center of the mini map and start running. Max range is slightly greater than the distance from the center of the mini map to the horizontal edge, so if you toggle the map rotation and you’re personal waypoint stays within the horizontal edge of the map, you’ll be in range.

note: map should be fully expanded and fully zoomed in.

The skill hint is buggy. If I recall you have to actually click the “x” on the hint bubble for it to count towards you’re achievement.

Not sure if that’s a requirement to get it on the actual hint page.

CptAurellian.9537:

Scepter? Not sure about that, haven’t used it for a year or so, but are you sure it would really fit to a phantasm mesmer? With the useless clone on the end of the AA chain?

Yep, the auto attack chain is slow, gives you plenty of time to interrupt the 3rd attack with a offhand phantasm, scepter 3 (which does some pretty decent burst damage actually), defensive skill (scepter/sword block, magic bullet) or even a weapon swap back to sword/X

If you view your ranged weapon as something you sit on while waiting for your heal to come back up so you can get back in the melee, then scepter is a very strong option. It also lets you keep close to the melee action so you’re not missing out on boons you’re team mates are passing around.

Well, I’m honestly most interested in getting this thing moving again and would be fine with any of them. So in the spirit of GW2, lets say…. Play how you want?

Global rules: no tranquilizer gun

Options:

• Full equip/skills → but must not take damage
• no armor → any thing else goes
• original rules → but you can wear armor

any objections?

The whole party is for maximum benefit.

Anyway, normally it doesn’t matter where you’re standing for feedback. In the asura fractal for instance, when you put it over a harpy it doesn’t matter if your far away or right under them it’ll work just as fine.

Also important thing to note about feedback is that it reflects on both sides of the skill. Think of the trait medic’s feedback for instance. When it creates the feedback when you start reviving, you are still safe in the bubble from anything firing from outside of it.

Now for lupi. The big difference between him and every other mob in the game is that A.net took his size into consideration. He stands way above the feedback bubble, thus a.net made it so his attacks are not automatically reflected just due to a feedback at his feet. If that were the case, you wouldn’t need to dodge.

But, the second example still works, anything inside the bubble is safe, due to any attack hitting the bubble from above getting reflected.

Once again, lupi’s attacks are largely aimed at players.

Everyone ranged → nearly no attacks at his feet → nearly no attacks to reflect → nearly no damage

Everyone melee → nearly all the attacks at his feet → a TON of damage from feedback

That said, with me being the only person meleeing feedback is generally enough to get him to phase 3 with only 2 casts (one if I’m lucky and have a dps group or another person meleeing).

This compares to p3 in one cast and him only having 20%~ health with the full party at melee and proper buffs/debuffs (this is how people pull off the sub 30 second lupi kills that skip phase 3)

As for melee vs range on the fight. except for p1, the fight is honestly easier in melee as there are less attacks to worry about. For instnace

P1:
Melee threats: kick, grub spawn, locusts
Ranged threats: grub spawn, locusts

P2:
Melee threats: swipe, mass AoE
Ranged threats: shadow step, single target projectiles, mass AoE

P3:
Melee threats: single target life steal, AoE life steal, bombardment, bubble(if moving too much only)
Ranged threats: single target life steal, AoE life steal, bombardment, bubble, single target projectiles

The only phase where there’s more attacks to watch out for in melee over ranged is p1.

That said, you have to have quicker reaction times in melee over ranged.

You mention survivability, I melee on all my characters and all my characters are full berserker. If I screw up, I’m on the ground. If you’re meleeing lupi, it’s not about being able to tank the hits, but being able to dodge them – orrian truffle stew or weapons with energy sigils are invaluable when you’re first learning.

There’s several videos floating around of people soloing the boss that include commentary on what the tells are for each attack, I’d suggest studying those so you understand his animations and know how to react.

Or what about the reverse: no armor but freedom of weapons/skills?

Adding armor lets you make some mistakes as well as boosts offensive stats.

Adding Weapons/skills would probably allow every class to interrupt the berserker state nearly every time as boost offense in there own way.

you can read up on the dungeons on this site to get an understanding of what you’ll need to do for the various encounters.

If you want a video guide instead so you can see what you’ll be up against, you’re probably best off using Strife’s guides. They are somewhat out of date in terms of tactics, but as far as I know the mechanics are mostly up to date. I’m also not aware of anyone making updated video guides since he did his.

Sorry guys. Didn’t mean to make something that would stall out this thread.

Anyway, my thought when making this was something like that of the “no merchant” challenge in resident evil 4. Take away all of the things that make the game (in this case encounter) easy to provide a challenge.

That said, that challenge had the potential to be long and drawn out too. I just didn’t want to make something “too easy” when most of the people posting in this thread lately have been [HC] and [rT] people.

Anyway, in the interest of getting this moving again, what do you guys think? Just a new challenge all together? or change the rules for this one?

If the latter, I feel like the no tranquilizer gun rule should stay as the fight really poses no challenge other wise. Perhaps that being the only rule, otherwise anything goes?

dobbo.9564:

Yeah I got that .. maybe I just wasn’t close enough. Unless it doesn’t do as much damage as I thought it did .. :/

Most pugs will not do as much damage as recordings of organised groups.

Unlike most mobs, the only thing feedback reflects on lupi are bolts that actually hit the feedback bubble, so it works pretty consistently on p3.

p2 however, the shots are psudo targeted at players. So if everyone is spread out at range there will be very little shots hitting at lupis feet causing low damage. I’d suggest learning to melee him so there’s at least 1 target (plus clones) at his feet to improve damage.

For pugging any class will do well so long as you understand the class and the fractals.

That said, with out enough projectile defense certain fractals will become painful (grawl shaman boss for instance). Of the ones you listed Ele, Thief and Mesmer all have great options on this end.

Anyway pros and cons:

Ele
see what Bright said

Thief

Pros:

• Spammable blind fields for trash pulls.
• Stealth for skipping mobs/performing content
• very good single target DPS

Cons:

• Without a fire field cannot help much with party buffing
• Also quite Squishy

Mesmer
Pros:

• Ability to steal one of mossman’s axes for a potential insta kill on the next level
• plenty of reflects (trait your focus)
• Alot more survivability with vigor on crits and blurred frenzy

Cons:

• Low DPS except for the rare case when your phantasms get left alone
• Both SoI and TW rely on your allies sharing buffs/having DPS to be useful

Warrior
Pros:

• Decent DPS
• Plenty of party buffs
• Good health pool + heavy armor = great defense even with berserker
• Having multiple isn’t a bad thing (not so much with the other classes)

Cons:

• no reflects

In any case, you really shouldn’t have too many problems with those four classes. While I have seen pugs advertising “heavies only” most of the class dislike is still directed at engi/necro/ranger.

sword/warhorn & GS. Between warhorn 4 and signet of rage you’ll have 100% swiftness uptime. If you don’t have auto target turned off in options turn it off and you can use the sword leap and GS rush to move by things quickly (as well as whirlwind).

Bull’s rush can give you an extra movement skill if needed (really helps on the extended run on p2 after lupi)

p1 – you should be moving fast enough to not get hit by any of the oozes and the warhorn will cure the cripple. If you find yourself getting more condi’s on you bring mending/signet of stamina

p2 – bring balanced stance/dolyak signet for stability against the inquest/risen sentinels. when the deadeyes target you, dodge after 2 seconds.

p3 – same as p1, if the risen eles get you with chill warhorn should be enough, bring other condi removal otherwise

Looks good. Just a formatting suggestion. I feel like the text during your sigil section runs together, especially in the 1h sigil section.

obal.3218:

1H:
Night + Force
Night + Slaying or Force + Slaying if mobs are same type for the dungeon
Accuracy + Force for daytime dungeons with a mix of mobs
Perception + Perception (2 = 2 stacks per kill) for stacking on trash when using the Hammer build or the Sword + GS build if you do DPS rotations
Bloodlust + Bloodlust if your going to use only sword with RH Strength trait or have a ranger with Spotter in the group + banner of discipline

Perhapse consider italics/underline/bullets to help improve readability?

1H:

• Night + Force
• Night + Slaying or Force + Slaying if mobs are same type for the dungeon
• Accuracy + Force for daytime dungeons with a mix of mobs
• Perception + Perception (2 = 2 stacks per kill) for stacking on trash when using the Hammer build or the Sword + GS build if you do DPS rotations
• Bloodlust + Bloodlust if your going to use only sword with RH Strength trait or have a ranger with Spotter in the group + banner of discipline

also

obal.3218:

Merciful Intervention – Useful for hard trash run

Did you mean Judge’s Intervention?

Zafari.8521:

see top thread in tech support, buster

Look in the tech support/bug forums. A.net has already acknowledged the issue and are working on a fix.

mosspit.8936:

Mesmer:

Temporal Curtain out of range of Defiler’s pull attack. Gain speed buff and Into The Void to pull the Sentinels. Run in and dodge Defiler’s pull attack. Pop Power Break (mantra). Veil > Mass Inv before 1st Inquest and Deadeye group. Pop 2nd Power Break during Mass Inv channel. Prestige just before last group. Chances are that you will not even aggro the last group of Deadeyes/Risen.

I feel the 2 seconds of stab from the mantra rarely end up being useful and would rather have 3 seconds of stealth off decoy.

basically before entering aggro range of the first deadeye/inquest group go decoy > veil when 1 second remains on decoy > mass invis as soon as veil is crossed

have a torch on standby for if needed

video guide

Jeremlloyd.6837:

Depends if you’re playing solo, with pugs or with an organised group.

Solo: assassin is better than berserker
Pugs: i’d say assassin
Organised group: berserker since you’ll have ~100% fury uptime + banner of discipline.

I ran some personal number. Using a 10/30/0/20/10 build with scholar runes, battle sigil, and 5 or 10% sigil neither pure assassin’s nor berserker was best.

order was

1. assassin’s armor, berserker weapons/trinkets
2. assassin’s weapons, berserker armor/trinkets
3. full berserker
4. assassin’s weapons/armor, berserker trinkets

I didn’t both running the numbers for every possible combo of armor stats however, so there’s probably an even more optimal set up.

To maximize reflect damage however (against lupicus for instance) you’ll want to maximize crit chance, so for pugs that would be full assassin’s

Incoming “LF1M thief for Arah 2”

Read this, instantly joined an arah 2 pug. I eagerly await the conclusion of this run

I wouldn’t worry about the vuln as much. The duration is only 9~ seconds and since vuln time is halved on bosses it’s not going to be active very long. This translates into 4.5~ seconds of vuln that can be applied every 34~ seconds with 30 points in illusions.

To effectively stack vuln for bosses it needs to be a continuous effort using short CD skills(warriors axe 2), preferably auto attacks(engi’s vuln on explosions). For mesmer this is our 1h sword auto attack (5 second duration → 2.5 on bosses → 2 stacks per chain will keep nearly permanent 2 vuln stacks). The sword auto attack also cleaves so you’re applying vuln to more then just one target when fighting trash.

Ok. First off, I suggested the phantasms builds as those are what the top PvE guilds are running for their speed clears and what a lot people are going to expect in LFG posts tagged with “speed”, “dps” or “experienced”

Godmoney.2048:

BTW, the guy is asking for a “viable” pve build, not ideal. There’s a difference.

Not interested in speed clears? Here’s some options. First thing to understand is mesmer is first and foremost a support class. With party buffs and 3 phantasms we are potentially the highest DPS in the game, but AoEs can often make that difficult if not impossible to sustain.

So what makes a mesmer desirable to parties over other classes?

• reflects
• condition removal
• boon removal
• boon doubling
• skipping support
• time warp

Guardian may boast the longest reflect, but mesmer by far has the most. 5 seconds off a warden’s attack with 5 seconds from a traited curtain and 6 from feedback. put that together with the warden’s ability to spin again and we can easily outpace a guardian in reflect uptime.

Certainly projectile protection isn’t needed in every dungeon, but it is important enough that I could not imagine a dungeon build – particularly focused on pugging – without putting 20 points in inspiration (glamour CDs and traited focus).

Boon/Condition removal can be summed up with null field. But the 1h sword auto chain, mantra of resolve and even iDisenchanter all deserve special mention and can work better then null field in specific situations.

Boon doubling comes down to signet of inspiration. and skipping support in party stealths or portal.

So if we focus on our support roles first we have: most of our utility skill taken up and 20 points in inspiration. This poses a serious problem for shatter builds.

Ignoring the fact that in some cases were going to want the utility of the warden/disenchanter rather then shatter them away. with 20 in inspiration we’re left with 50 points to play with.

3 things that help shatters deal damage:

• 20% damage trait (10 in domination)
• clones on dodge (20 in dueling)
• 4th shatter effect on you (30 in illusions)

To get all 3 we need 60 points, so were stuck with limiting our damage, or limiting our utility.

Since mesmer is a utility class, I am not going to sacrifice any of the utility of the inspiration line – especially since wardens could be shattered away. Since other utility skill slots will be taken up for utility I’m not going to want to waste one on clone generation, that and the precision/crit damage bonus from the tree 20 in dueling makes perfect sense.

From here the question is to get 20% damage or a 4th shatter effect. Given mesmer’s lack of other damage modifiers and the importance of shattering often, 30 in illusions is probably the best option. leaving us with 0/20(IV, X)/0/20(II, VIII)/30(I, III, XI)

By no means ideal, but if the goal is to supply all the utility that a mesmer should be bringing to dungeon parties and doing so with a shatter spec…. this is probably the best option available.

10/30 is better dps (see attached) from an objective standpoint.

Now for what is better utility. I’ll first say I strongly feel that a PvE dungeon build will never be a good WvW build and the same in reverse.

I’ll start with PvE as that is strongest area (if your mainly focusing open world, most of this will not apply).

In PvE shatter damage is sadly lacking. Shatter is all about dealing a sudden burst which works great in dropping targets in PvP content. Against the larger health pools and toughness of dungeon mobs however shatter damage cannot sustain over long periods of time like phantasms do.

Further, one of the best utilities mesmer brings to dungeon groups lies in projectile defense, so having 20 in inspiration (glamour CDs and focus CDs/reflection) is invaluable. In prolonged fights where reflection is needed having a warden get a second rotation off is another strike against shatter builds.

The most popular dungeon builds are variants of 10/30/0/20/10 and 0/20/0/25/25 currently and focus on phantasm DPS – only shattering when defense is needed (f4) or when a mob is about to die (f1).

If you wanted to still attempt shatters. something to the effect of 0/20/0/20/30 would probably be best, but you’re choice would become sacrificing utility (focus reflects), clones on dodge, 20% extra damage on shatters or IP. I’m figuring the 4th shatter effect is going to matter more (and feel more like what you’re used to) than the damage mod. Also the build becomes hard to play without clones on dodge and I would be 100% unwilling to sacrifice projectile defense utility as that is one of the main reasons mesmers are valued for dungeon play.

I really wish I could help more here, as I started with shatter builds… but they really are less then ideal for dungeon play

WvW

I think this depends on if you’re playing with friends or not – and further if these friends are on some sort of voice chat with you.

With the weapons and utilities you’ve listed the only daze you have is stopping your block early on sword 4 or on your f3. In the case of f3, I’d fear the person you’ve targeted is going to either cleanse the condi or retreat before you can get clones up again to capitalize on it. In which case I’d value the higher raw damage of 10/30.

With a group however, you can use the daze on sword 4 followed by you’re and your team mates bursts. Or you can just use f3 for a CC and vuln while you’re team mates take advantage. I’d also value the boon removal on shatters more in that case as it could take off protection further aiding your team mates attack.

Once again, I’m not as well versed in WvW so feel free to take all this with a grain of salt.

Godmoney.2048:

Can’t tell you how many mesmers i see who hardly ever shatter…….IE most of them.

That’s because shatter damage is terrible in dungeons. The biggest use for shatters in dungeons is f3 to put on vulnerability (if traited) and f4 for defense.

Shatter damage is as you have said, burst damage → highly effective at dropping targets in PvP but against target’s larger health pools in dungeons it is extremely ineffective.

Yes the phantasms die when the target they’re spawned on is killed, so you should shatter right as it is about to die, but until then you’ll do much better DPS by letting them live and continue to attack.

That said, 20/20/0/0/30 will work just fine for open world PvE as the content is extremely easy there with most mobs being normal (or bronze vets) and having smaller health pools where shatters are effective.

In dungeons however you’ll be facing mobs of a higher level than you, silver vets, and champ/legendary bosses. If you want to be doing anything approaching decent dps you’ll need phantasms that stay alive.

I’m sorry I can’t help you more, but that really is the harsh truth of it. The reason why you see sword/focus builds going 10/30/0/20/10 and 0/20/0/25/25 and cannot find shatter builds is because the phantasm builds bring the best support/damage to the party while the shatter builds do not.

Also, the DPS of the iZerker sucks on bosses which don’t have larger hit boxes (so basically almost all of them since ANet just scaled up humanoid models) and missing even one hit makes its damage drop below swordsman and of course it has a longer recharge.

In my testing against single targets both the duelist and the swordsman consistently got quicker kill times than the berserker.

Also seeing as the GS damage is reduced at any range beyond maximum I would propose scepter/offhand as a superior ranged option.

First off, I fail to think of a single boss that cannot be meleed, so I view the ranged weapons as learning tools to be used while learning tool to fall back to when you’ve made too many mistakes in melee and need to wait for your heal to come off CD.

To that end the burst on scepter 3 and a harder hitting phantasms are going to help more on a boss in the down time from melee, plus the scepter allows you to maintain maximum efficiency while being close to your team mates to share/receive boons.

As far as “scepter’s auto attack destroy’s phantasms” argument, the auto chain can be interrupted through any other skill (scepter 3 and your offhand phantasm for instance) while you’re waiting to rejoin melee.

As far as tagging things. The main reason to tag mobs is for sigil stacks. If trash loot was important, we wouldn’t be skipping 95+% of it. You will always stack a sigil faster with s/f that both have stacking sigils in them. Having both a main hand and an offhand that have the same stacking sigil allows you to stack that sigil twice as fast -> 13 tags needed for a fully stacked sigil instead of 25.

The only other thing I’d change about the guide would be to say that deceptive evasion is more about powering up compounding power than it is about shatters. The largest example would be Lupicus to ensure the 9% modifier when reflecting his p2 AoE. I would highly caution against it otherwise, for the same argument against scepter auto attack (destroys phantasms) as well as the clones will be spawned on the closest mob – be that aggroed to you or not – which can cause bad situations when you’re trying to avoid aggro.

Crapgame.6519:

There is no reason to go either tank or heal. There are, however, a few traits or elites that will help. So change accordingly

This. While ever class is expected to do it’s share of the DPS I do view a line between pure DPS classes and support DPS hybrids.

Classes like warrior can start and end a dungeon without having to change a single skill on their bar alot of times as they are all geared towards DPS.

Guardian however has to know the situation and swap out skills as needed. Need condi removal? get purging flame. Need reflection? get wall of reflection/shield of the avenger. Need stability? Stand your ground/hallowed ground. Nothing special happening in a fight? bring bane signet/fire fields for extra DPS.

When your unsure what is needed, bring both reflects and condi removal to be safe. Remember the encounter and if you don’t find yourself needing one or the other, feel free to sub out for another skill next time. Alternatively look up information on the path before hand so you know what to bring ahead of time.

Black Box.9312:

That’s correct; you have the right to choose who you want to play with. But you don’t have the right to tell someone else how they should play their game. If someone is rolling a shout heal warrior in PvE and you don’t like that because it’s not DPS heavy enough for you, that’s kittening terrific. Find someone else to play with and let them do their thing with a different group. It’s really not a difficult concept, but it seems to be elusive to many of the ‘elite’ in this game, which is quite sad.

deSade.9437:

Yet, they do.
They complain in whisper, then head to the forum and complain there.

That’s just the thing. I doubt many of the people you’re calling “elite” care what casuals do. When they do care is when a person (shout heal warrior to continue the example) joins a party that they clearly do not meet the advertised specifications for (max dps/speed run) and complain via whispers/forums for being kicked.

This becomes even worse when said person proceeds to try to defend their build as viable for that type of run. That is when their build is going to get torn apart by the “elite” players because that player is trying to prove their ability of joining the “elite” runs – something they don’t meet the qualifications for.

If instead they’d recognize that those players wanted nothing to do with their playstyle and made/joined groups advertised plainly as “path # any welcome” they would receive no criticism to their build/playstyle.

It’s not about telling people how to play the game, it’s about telling people how they want to play the game if they want to play with a select group of people.

Black Box.9312:

Syn Sity.5826:

Exactly. Bosses in games shouldn’t have to conform to the way you like to play.

And neither should other players.

Juuuuuuuuuuust sayin’.

Actually, they do.

While we are free to play “how they want” we are just as free to play with “who we want”.

If player A wants to join a party advertised as “speed clear – max dps and experienced only” and that player is a shout heal warrior, they should not be surprised and have no right to complain if they find them self kicked as the party made it quite clear who they wanted to play with.

Same works in reverse if a party advertises as “full clear, no skips no stacking” anyone trying to force the party to do so shouldn’t be surprised or complain about if they are kicked.

Actually, yeah what dub said. I was take numbers from build calculator sight and felt they were off from what I remember seeing in game…. indeed they were off.

Oxxy.7068:

What kind of stacking sigils would you guys recommend with 25 in radiance? Bloodlust or Perception? Or whatever my heart wants?

Bloodlust under ideal circumstances, but the change between the two is very slight (see attached).

Bloodlust stayed marginally better than perception even when dropping spotter/disc banner/fury/might/etc. Can’t say this is overly surprising due to guards low crit damage.

This would be the same for 10/30/0/5/25 since the only difference between it and 10/30/0/10/20 are non-offensive stats and damage multipliers. basically in the damage formula:

[part of formula that deals with stacking sigils] * damage mods

what’s best for 10/30/0/10/20 is best for 10/30/0/5/25 – just even more damage.

But… you can never go wrong with playing how you want ;P

Anicetus.1253:

I thought ~60% sword time seems to be best rotation wise but from what i experienced in my lupi solos the optimum is more around 50/50. And that even includes Force + Slaying on Sword/Focus. 3-4 boons are average in solo play, 5-6 in group play. 7-8 with some 6u4n66u4rd.

Sorry, should of been more clear. I was basically running numbers like:

[effective power of RHS build w/ sword] * % of damage from sword + [effective power of RHS build w/ GS] * % of damage from GS

to find which gave a better number than a PotV build. For it to be more effective under ideal circumstances the sword attacks would need to supply 65% of the damage. I have no clue what that translates into play time.

I’m just theorizing that as a PotV becomes less effective in pug play that a RHS build could start to deal more damage. Assuming this is content where you value shout CDs in a pug and you can’t get both traits.

I guess than it would come down to what percentage of damage comes from the GS side of the rotation versus the sword side. It’s looking like you would need to get 65% of your DPS from sword under ideal situations for RHS to be better then PotV.

In any case. in a pug situation where the boon upkeep is probably going to be 4~ or less and things like max might/fury/spotter/banners aren’t present I’d start to think that the potential gain on the sword side with RHS makes up for the loss on the GS side. Pugging would be the place I’d want the shout CDs the most also.

spoj.9672:

Silver.3284:

Question: why 10/30/0/5/25 rather than 10/30/0/10/20?

Better dps. If you want shout cooldowns id recommend going 10/25/0/10/25.

Even under ideal circumstances, 10/30/0/10/20 gave better numbers for me then 10/25/0/10/25. Obviously 10/30/0/5/25 would be the best one, but if your in a situation that requires that needs shout CDs (pugging), it’s looking like RHS is the stronger trait.

On a side note, how exactly does the bonus from PotV get factored in? I did it like:

[total multiplier before PotV] * 1.01 ^ [number of boons]

since that yielded the higher number, but I wasn’t sure if the trait gave you a new damage multiplier for each boon or just an additive total

Anicetus.1253:

Too bad warriors don’t have teleports.

Mesmer portal?

Oxxy.7068:

I guess control is… fix’able somehow, not so sure about condition tho, i just can’t see it working on PvE without some sort of big revamp.

Scale up monster toughness and drop down vitality to the point condition damage is the strongest option to use, but keep the current caps.

Every group is going to want one or two condi builds then, but any more and it’s a DPS loss. Also stacking warriors isn’t going to work as well or precise strikes is going work against the condi user. Guards would have to announce VoJ procs so the condi user knows to hold back an attack so their condition damage is the one attached to the burn.

The major issue would be the actual fix would just be buff toughness and leave vitality unchanged, as conditions are damage over time and currently things die way to quickly to raw burst damage. This would end up being highly punishing to defense oriented PUGs. The other argument would be that most current fights have very simple mechanics and prolonging them to make condi’s viable is just going to make them boring.

The only way I’ve ever seen Simin bug was in a run when she never stealthed once. But that would make the fight easier not impossible.

Bloodstone shard however I’ve had a run when it was invisible, but still possible to kill if you spammed your melee attacks where it should be. I think I recall seeing a patch note a few months ago saying that bug was fixed however.